Characters / Magic: The Gathering: Ravnica

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The Guilds

The Azorius Senate

Azor I

The ancient, enigmatic Parun of the Azorius Senate and primary author of the Guildpact. The mysterious sphinx planeswalker vanished from Ravnica to attend to affairs elsewhere millenia ago, and his current wareabouts remain a great mystery to most of Ravnica's citizenry.

You can read more about him here.

Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

"The world may not know peace, but in my presence you will know silence."

Color: White and Blue
Race: Human
Class: Advisor

The leader of the Azorius Senate around the time of the original Ravnica Cycle. He oversees the trial of Feather and tasks the spirit of Agrus Kos with getting to the bottom of Szadek's nefarious plans, though his own plans prove to be equally sinister.

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• Blind Justice: He leads the guild responsible for drafting the laws of Ravnica and wears a silvery blindfold.
• Evil Cripple: He is missing the entire lower half of his body and gets around on a hovering throne. He is also the mastermind of (most of) the troubles plaguing Ravnica in the Dissension novel.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: He enslaved Szadek's ghost and forced the vampire to do his bidding. Szadek was not happy about this, and the very instant that he was given an opportunity to confront Augustin IV, he killed him in a slow and agonizing fashion.
• False Flag Operation: He orchestrates most of the chaos taking place in Dissension to convince the Senate that the Guildpact has failed Ravnica and that they must vote to grant him the Emergency Authority needed to throw out the Guildpact and impose martial law.
• Order Versus Chaos: He falls on the Order side of things. He thinks the Guildpact is flawed and unworkable because it's a system of law that allows chaos to flourish, and he wants to throw it out and replace it with a far more draconian set of laws that will impose his vision of order and peace on the city.
• Reduced Mana Cost: His creature card makes any white or blue spells cast by his controller less expensive. He also inverts this trope by making all spells cast by his opponent more expensive.

Isperia

"I serve only justice. But through that duty, I serve all of Ravnica."

Color: White and Blue

Race: Sphinx

The leader of the Azorius from shortly after the end of original Ravnica block until her death at Vraska's hands (er... eyes) at the beginning of Guilds of Ravnica block.

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• Draw Extra Cards: Her "Supreme Judge" iteration lets you draw a card whenever an enemy creature attacks you or one of your planeswalkers.
• Geas: The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica gives her several ways of preventing people from doing things that she doesn't want. Ironically, this does not include the ability to cast the actual geas spell.
  • She can invoke her Supreme Legal Authority to forbid up to three creatures from taking a specified action. For instance, she could forbid a fighter from taking the Attack action, forbid a sorcerer from casting any spells, and forbid a rogue from taking the Hide action, all at the same time.
  • Also, any creature struck by her claws must make a Wisdom saving throw or suffer a short-lived magical effect which makes them take psychic damage each time they try to attack her.
• Giant Flyer: She's a sphinx, so naturally both of her creature cards have the Flying keyword. The artwork for "Isperia, Supreme Judge" emphasizes the "giant" part of the trope by making her seem like she's about the same size as Niv-Mizzet.
• Killed Offscreen: Vraska assassinated her some time before the War of the Spark storyline in order to leave the Azor leadership free for takeover from Dovin Baan, another one of Nicol Bolas' servants at the time.
• Lawful Neutral: This is her official in-universe alignment according to the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, reflecting her character as a stern but fair adjudicator who believes that law is civilization's greatest bastion against the forces of disorder and chaos.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Her "Inscrutable" iteration lets you search your deck for a single flying creature of your choice and put it into your hand, provided that she deals combat damage to your opponent first and that you correctly guess the name of one of the cards in your opponent's hand.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Granted, her reign was sandwiched between Augustin IV and Dovin Baan, so it's hard not to grade on a pretty generous curve, but she is notably the only Azorius guildmaster to not be an Arc Villain in their respective block.
• Taken for Granite: She was turned to stone by Vraska.
• Your Size May Vary: Most cards depict Isperia as being about the size of a bus, but she's utterly gigantic in the artwork for her "Supreme Judge" card, which depicts her as towering over the surrounding cityscape.

The Boros Legion

Razia

Color: Red and White
Race: Angel

The parun of the Boros Legion. She and her angels were absent for much of the original Ravnica trilogy, with the third book revealing the grizzly reason why.

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• Attack Reflector: Her creature card can redirect the first 3 damage that would be dealt to one of your creatures this turn to another creature.
• Celestial Paragons and Archangels: She was the oldest and most powerful angel in Ravnica, as well as the founder of the guild to which most of Ravnica's angels belong.
• Flaming Sword: She wielded a fiery greatsword.
  Flavor Text for Razia, Boros Archangel: Her sword burns with such brightness that foes avert their eyes and arrows divert their paths.
• Monster Progenitor: She created all other angels on the plane of Ravnica, or at least the ones that are part of the Boros Legion.
• Posthumous Character: Razia's only appearance in the Ravnica Cycle novels was in a flashback describing how she died. The Razia whom the protagonists interact with in the present day is just a Lupul taking on her form.
• Time Abyss: Like the other paruns who survived up to the present day, Razia was well over ten thousand years old.
• Trapped in Another World: She and all her angels became trapped in Agyrem when the Parhelion blundered into the Schism created by Zomaj Hauc. They then found themselves embroiled in a Hopeless War against Szadek and his army of ghosts, which ended with the angels being slaughtered to a man.

Agrus Kos

Color: Red and White

Race: Spirit (formerly Human)

Class: Soldier, Detective

The Troperiffic protagonist of the original Ravnica Cycle, a Hard Boiled Detective in the Wojek, the Boros police force.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: Inverted. Kos has used so many teardrops to patch himself up over his long career that he has become resistant to their effects. Worse, the toxic buildup of residual mana in his body means that every 'drop he takes brings him one step closer to a heart attack.
• Fantastically Indifferent: Safe to say at the end of his very, very long life, he had Seen It All and had a quip ready for whatever exhausting nonsense was threatening the city this week.
• Friend to All Children: Kos gets along well with kids, particularly orphans and street urchins since he grew up in an orphanage himself.
• Ghost Amnesia: During his brief stint as a ghostly doorman, Kos has trouble remembering most of the details about his life. He knows who he is, but he can't remember how he died or the names of his friends. He gets his memories back upon being "anchored" to a living person.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: When Kos learns that his bosses are going to promote him to shift captain, he decides to finally take his retirement to avoid spending the rest of his career behind a desk. Unfortunately, he had recently submitted a retirement refusal request. The brass took advantage of this fact by granting his request shortly before they offered the promotion, giving him no choice but to keep working.
• Magic Wand: Kos carried a pendrek, a standard-issue baton that Wojek officers use to pacify enemies with blasts of magic.
• Married to the Job: Kos's dedication to his job has left him with basically no personal life. He's had multiple failed marriages and has repeatedly refused to retire despite being old enough to do so, all because he has no idea what to do with himself when he's not on the clock.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: By arresting Szadek for trying to break the Guildpact, Kos unwittingly ends up breaking the Guildpact himself.
• Old Soldier: Even by Ravnican standards, Agrus is nearing retirement age. Unfortunately for him, his bosses won't allow something as trivial as death to stop him from foiling the latest plot to Take Over the World.
• Reluctant Retiree: Kos is old enough to retire from the Wojek League but has repeatedly refused to do so because he's Married to the Job. He only changes his mind when his bosses try to give him a promotion he doesn't want; unfortunately for him, they won't allow it.
• Support Party Member: Two of his creature cards can buff your other creatures in various ways. "Agrus Kos, Wojek Veteran" temporarily gives your attacking red creatures +2/+0 and your attacking white creatures +0/+2 whenever he attacks, while "Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier" lets you spread the effects of any ability that targets only him to the rest of your creatures.

Feather

Color: Red and White
Race: Angel

A Firemane angel serving time in the League of Wojek as penance for an unspecified transgression. She has a deep respect for Agrus Kos.

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• Emotion Bomb: Her voice has a subtle magical effect which calms those who hear it.
• Fallen Angel: A non-evil example. Feather committed some sort of transgression against the tenets of the Boros creed, for which she was punished by having her wings bound in unbreakable fetters and being forced to work as a constable in the League of Wojek.
• Flaming Sword: She can set her sword on fire with magic.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: She once infiltrated a theatre troupe by pretending to be a human actress auditioning for the part of the angel Razia in a play. The other actors didn't realize she was a real angel until she broke character during a performance to arrest one of the performers.
• Monster Progenitor: After Szadek's slaughter of the Boros angels left Feather the last of her kind, she went on to create the second generation of Ravnican angels.
• Mysterious Past: The details of whatever she did to end up with the Wojeks are never revealed.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Her real name is rather long and difficult to pronounce, so everyone just calls her Feather instead.
• Resource Reimbursement: "Feather, the Redeemed" functionally makes any instant or sorcery spell you cast reusable by returning the spell to your hand instead of sending it to the graveyard. She only does this if you cast the spell on one or more of your own creatures, however.
• Sole Survivor: She is the only first-generation angel to survive Szadek's massacre.
• Speak of the Devil: She claims that angels like her always know when someone is personally addressing them, regardless of distance.
• Winged Humanoid: As a Firemane angel, she has four wings.

Myczil Zunich

Agrus Kos's mentor and partner. He died fifty-seven years before the Decamillennial during Kos's first proper investigation, a fact that still haunts Kos decades later.

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• Accidental Murder: He thrust his sword into an alcove, believing that the person hiding in there was Palla the murderous Rakdos gang leader. It wasn't.
• Ambiguous Situation: Were any of the sightings of his ghost real, or was it all the Lupul taking on his form to mess with Kos?
• Disney Villain Death: While hardly a villain, he died by falling off a rooftop.
• Interspecies Romance: He, a human, was married to an elf.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The realization that he accidentally murdered an innocent child basically destroyed him.
• Posthumous Character: He has been dead for almost sixty years by the time of the Ravnica novel's main plot, with the flashback B plot explaining how he died and how it affected the other protagonists.

Bell Borca

Color: Red and White
Race: Spirit (formerly human)
Class: Soldier

A Wojek sergeant and Agrus Kos's partner at the time of the Decamillenial. Borca was killed in the days leading up to the celebration, but an insurance policy he took out before his death ensured that he would continue to annoy his partner as a ghost.

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• CCG Importance Dissonance: Borca's first and only appearance was in the Ravnica novel, which came out in 2005. He wouldn't receive a creature card until 2020. Admittedly, he was mostly a side character in that book, but still...
• Ghost Amnesia: He doesn't remember how he died, or how he wound up talking to Saint Bayul in a café after Kos asked him to stay with Luda's body. In the latter case, it's because the conversation at the café never actually happened: he was already dead at that point and the person talking to Bayul was a Lupul assuming his form.
• Invisible to Normals: The terms of his insurance policy make it so that his ghost could only be seen and heard by Kos, whom Borca had designated as his avenger. However, certain characters like Pivlic and Szadek were able to perceive him too.
• Purpose-Driven Immortality: Unlike normal Ravnican ghosts, which eventually fade away on their own after a while, Borca's ghost won't vanish until the exact moment that his killer is brought to justice in accordance with the terms of his Orzhov insurance policy.
• Whodunnit to Me?: A variation. He needs Kos to solve the mystery of his murder and bring his killer to justice in a court of law.

Aurelia

Color: Red and White

Race: Angel

The leader of the Boros since the death of the Guild's Parun, Razia, at the end of the original Ravnica Cycle. She is a severe and warlike figure, with a sense of justice that verges on the tautological.

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• Tautological Templar: The specific law the Boros enforce under Aurelia seems to shift from "basically identical to the current Azorius law" to "vaguely defined local statutes" to "just beat the shit out of anyone that looks suspicious" with little clear pattern.

The Gruul Clans

Borborygmos

"Crush them!"

Color: Red and Green

Race: Cyclops

Insofar as the Gruul can be said to ever follow anybody, Borborygmos is the uncontested leader of the barbaric clans in their endless war against everyone else.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Gruul chieftains earn their rule by being strong enough to defeat everyone else who claims it and maintain it by remaining too strong for others to defeat. Borborygmos has remained the longest-reigning Gruul chief by virtue of being the toughest fighter in all the clans.
• Chaotic Neutral: In-Universe, it's his official alignment listed in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, represnenting both his barbaric lifestyle and his desire to return Ravnica to a state of wild, primal savagery.
• Classical Cyclops: He's a huge, barbaric humanoid with a single beady eye and an impressive pair of horns.
• Famous Ancestor: According to rumor, he's descended from Cisarzim, the parun of the Gruul Clans.

Ilharg

Color: Red

Race: Boar god

A great boar god that the Gruul worship in anticipation for his heralding of the End-Raze against civilization.

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• Beast of the Apocalypse: The Gruul believe that his coming will signal the beginning of the End-Raze, where all of Ravnica will be torn down and return to a primordial wilderness.
• Full-Boar Action: He's a gigantic, many-tusked boar worshipped by barbarians and prophesied to one day end civilization.
• Giant Animal Worship: The Gruul worship him as a god. This is justified in this case, as Ilharg is in fact a true god.

The Izzet League

Niv-Mizzet

Color: Blue and Red (primary), Five-Color

Race: Dragon Avatar

Class: Wizard

A genius dragon, Niv-Mizzet is the parun and guildmaster of the Izzet League, one of the founding minds of Ravnica itself, and easily the smartest living thing on the plane.

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• All-Powerful Bystander: Is conspicuously absent during Murders at Karlov Manor, even when multiple guilds are at each others' throats. Detective Proft confronts him about it during The Stinger, and gets him to admit that he knew about the murder plot the entire time, but did nothing to intervene because he was preoccupied with a much larger project.
  Proft: To impress the Firemind is no small feat. Does it earn me the answer to a question?
  Niv-Mizzet: Perhaps. Ask, and I may answer.
  Proft: How could you not know?
• Back from the Dead: He's killed by Nicol Bolas before the start of War of the Spark. In preparation for this, he leaves instructions for a complex ritual involving his bones, his Soul Jar and Ravnica's ley lines, which ultimately manages to bring him back as the living avatar of the Guildpact.
• Bad Boss: He's been known to incinerate Izzet guildmembers who do things he doesn't like, and when Crix tries to suggest that he take care to avoid collateral damage while fighting the Nephilim, he telepathically slaps her so hard that she reacts as if it were a physical blow.
• Chaotic Neutral: In-Universe, at least prior to becoming the guildpact. It's his official alignment listed in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.
• Destructive Savior: When he shows up to fight the Nephilim, he quickly causes as much collateral damage as the monsters he's trying to kill. His fiery breath is hot enough to incinerate the Nephilim but also starts uncontrollable fires that quickly ravage the town, and his flapping wings kick up winds that flatten buildings and feed the flames.
• Egopolis: An extremely egoistical being, he named his guild after himself and designed its symbol as a self-portrait.
  The Izzet signet is redesigned often, each time becoming closer to a vanity portrait of Niv-Mizzet. — Izzet Signet
• Killed Offscreen: Nicol Bolas kills him shortly before the start of War of the Spark.
• Last of His Kind: While a few bestial creatures still linger here and there, Niv-Mizzet is the last true dragon left in Ravnica.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In Dissension, Niv-Mizzet shows up to fight the Nephilim. He kills two of them but sustains injuries in the process, shocking him. When the remaining three start to gang up on him, he decides to cut his losses and run, abandoning Ravnica to its fate.
• Soul Jar: Niv-Mizzet created a silver box in which to preserve his soul and consciousness in anticipation of his own death, which his spirit moves into after Bolas kills him.
• Time Abyss: He's an incredibly ancient being, having been born long before the signing of the Guildpact 10,000 years ago and having lived through all of Ravnica's history since.
• World's Smartest Man: He's the most intelligent living entity in Ravnica, by a very wide margin.
• World's Strongest Man: While the power rankings of the guildmasters are unclear, Niv-Mizzet is the most powerful of them, at least according to Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.

Zomaj Hauc

Race: Human

A brilliant but short-tempered Izzet magelord operating out of the Utvara reclamation zone. He was working on a secret project which threatened to burn all of Ravnica to the ground.

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• Arc Villain: He's the main antagonist of the Guildpact novel.
• An Arm and a Leg: He loses his right hand to a piece of dragon eggshell shrapnel as the blue dragon hatches from its egg.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: He once had a pet while he was still a student. He killed it by vaporizing its head with a spell, purely to show off to his peers.
• Dragon Tamer: His evil plan was to incubate three dragon eggs, enslave them once they hatched using mind control magic, and use them to overthrow Niv-Mizzet and take over Ravnica. He succeeded in hatching and enslaving one of the three dragons, who clearly didn’t like taking commands from him but had no choice but to obey.
• Evil Sorcerer: A powerful and crazy wizard who wants to Take Over the World.
• Eye Beams: He can shoot rays of flame from his eyes.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Even when he isn't shooting Eye Beams at people, his eyes constantly glow with a fiery energy.
• Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress: How he met his end. When the dragon he was riding was brought to a very sudden stop, he—not having bothered to secure himself to the dragon in any way—kept going forward at high speed. As a result, he was flung right off the dragon and crashed headfirst into a cliff at terminal velocity. His death is an abject lesson on why you should always wear seatbelts while riding dragons.
• Order Versus Chaos: He falls squarely on the Chaos side of things. He views the Guildpact as something that needs to be torn down because it imposed "ten thousand years of unnatural order and abominable law" on Ravnica.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He is angry that Teysa shot his chief foreman for reasons that have nothing to do with morality. The foreman was well-liked by his goblin workers, and without him to keep up their morale, progress on Zomaj Hauc's pet project will slow to a crawl.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: He apparently suffers from "firemadness", an affliction caused by Niv-Mizzet enhancing his intellect. Symptoms include delusions of grandeur, megalomania, and bouts of maniacal laughter.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He holds this opinion of most of his goblin workforce, viewing them all as a bunch of fawning yes men too stupid to keep up with his genius. Crix is the only goblin he values and holds any respect for, precisely because she's smart enough to provide stimulating conversation.
• Villainous Legacy: He dies at the end of the second book, but his actions produce the conditions that allow Izolda and Momir Vig to set their own villainous plans in motion, and allow the Nephilim to become a massive threat in the third book. His accidental creation of the Schism also leads to the Boros angels getting trapped in Agyrem, which allowed Szadek to massacre them all.

Crix

Race: Mizzium-augmented goblin

An Izzet courier in the employ of Zomaj Hauc. She carries a message that, unbeknownst to her, could doom all Ravnica.

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• Awesomeness by Analysis: The Utvar Gruul use an argot that she doesn't recognize. After listening to her captors for about a day, she's deciphered enough of it to follow a conversation between Golozar and the tribe's chieftain.
• Broken Pedestal: Crix idolizes her master and seeks to both earn his approval and repay him for the many gifts he has given to her. This admiration starts to crack when Zomaj Hauc inadvertently causes the deaths of several people by accelerating his shuttle in a geologically unstable area, and shatters completely once she learns that he is a cold-hearted megalomaniac who sees her as nothing but a disposable tool.
• Cyborg: Her arms and legs are magitek prosthetics that look and function like the real thing. The legs also have jet thrusters which allow her to fly.
• Lawful Stupid: She has many special abilities at her disposal that she could use to get herself out of various predicaments in the second book. But because she hasn't been authorized to use these abilities, she won't. This gets lampshaded when Teysa arrives in the Cauldron just in time to see Crix blast off on her rocket feet, and incredulously wonders why Crix didn't use this ability to get herself to the township much sooner.
• Magic Enhancement: Crix is far smarter than the average goblin thanks to magical and alchemical experiments carried out on her when she was a baby.
• Psychic Link: Niv-Mizzet rewards her for her actions against Zomaj Hauc by granting her a telepathic connection to his mind, letting them communicate with each other over any distance. She uses this connection to call for Niv-Mizzet's aid against the rampaging Nephilim in Dissension.
• Rank Up: She is promoted from courier to Master Engineer in the weeks between the events of the second and third books.

The Cult of Rakdos

Rakdos

"Entertain me."

Color: Black and Red

Race: Demon

A powerful and dangerous demon revered by the Cult of Rakdos and feared and loathed by everyone else.

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• Always a Bigger Fish: When Rakdos is unleashed upon the city in Dissension, he makes short work of the first Nephilim to cross his path. Then he runs afoul of Experiment Kraj. The Blob Monster's gelatinous mass proves too acidic for him to deal with, and he is unable to get away before Kraj engulfs him, burning him so badly that he slips into a coma.
  • He manages to play the bigger fish himself, finally, in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, when everybody else in story has been largely helpless against the scorpion dragon Akul, Rakdos is wonderfully eager to fight him... And then defeats him entirely offscreen without any notable trouble at all.
• Big Red Devil: He's a towering, crimson-skinned monster with curling horns, great batlike wings and hooves legs, and rules over hellish pits of iron, fire and suffering.
• Chaotic Evil: In-Universe, it's his official alignment listed in Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, representing how he dedicates himself to slaking his thirst for novelty and entertainment in a manner that's almost invariably harmful and destructive to everyone else.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: He's the most powerful demon in Ravnica, and the ultimate ruler of the guild that most demons belong to.
• Elemental Weapon: His favored weapon is a flaming scythe.
• Heroic Neutral: No, seriously. Every time Rakdos himself personally appears in a story, it's actually to defend Ravnica from a greater threat, be it the Nephilim or Bolas's Dreadhorde. It's to the point that Rakdos and his Cult might legitimately be counted among the plane's most reliable defenders.
• The Magnificent: He's typically known as Rakdos the Defiler.
• Make My Monster Grow: In Dissension, Rakdos is 25 feet tall when he first emerges from his lava pit but quickly grows big enough to rival the now-massive Nephilim as he makes his way toward the surface.
• Orcus on His Throne: He finds most of Ravnican life unfathomably boring, and spends most of his time sleeping or waiting for his Cultists to do something entertaining.
• Pest Controller: In Dissension, he can control all the rats in the city of Ravnica, inciting them to attack and devour everything in sight.
• Time Abyss: He's unfathomably old, having already been ancient when the Guildpact was signed 10,000 years ago.

Izolda

Color: Red and Black
Race: Human
Class: Cleric

The high priestess and acting guildmaster of the Cult around the time of the Ravnica Cycle. Izolda seeks to awaken and take control of her lord now that the Guildpact is broken, and she needs both a dragon's brain fluid and the blood of a guildmaster—or someone related to one—to do it.

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• Blood Magic: She is a sinister "blood witch", and her ritual to control Rakdos involves drinking the blood of a Human Sacrifice.
• Devoured by the Horde: Her own cultists eat her alive after she collapses from the pain of her Synchronization-induced acid burns.
• Harmful Healing: She knows a spell that closes a person's wounds by making rough black threads with pointed tips sprout from their flesh and forcibly stitch the wounds shut. It will stop them from bleeding out, but it's also incredibly painful.
• Hero Killer: She kills Jarad.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: Her ritual allows her to control Rakdos by taking the Defiler's spirit into herself.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The card which is apparently meant to represent her names her "Lyzolda".
• Power at a Price: Her creature card lets you sacrifice another creature to either deal 2 damage to a single target or draw a card, depending on whether the sacrificed creature was red or black.
• Synchronization: The ritual she uses to control Rakdos also makes her suffer sympathetic wounds whenever the demon-god is injured. When Rakdos is engulfed by Experiment Kraj, the pain of the resulting acid burns overwhelms her, and she collapses.
• Unwitting Pawn: She has no idea that Momir Vig allowed her to obtain the draconic cerebral fluid she needs to awaken and control Rakdos, or that he plans to defeat Rakdos with Experiment Kraj in a case of Engineered Heroics.
• Would Hurt a Child: She kidnaps four underaged Ledev trainees, including Jarad and Fonn's son Myc, with the intent to torture them all and offer Myc up as a Human Sacrifice. She also has one of the trainees killed and reanimated as a nightmarish "ragamuffyn" zombie.

The Golgari Swarm

Svogthir

Race: Zombie (it's unknown what he was prior)

The founder of the Golgari Swarm, a powerful lich revered by his followers as "the god-zombie". He was deposed by the Sisters of Stone Death and imprisoned beneath his guild's pyramid for a thousand years.

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• Body Horror: His decaying body has colonies of animals living inside of it by the time Savra seeks him out. There are crabs living in his knees and bats roosting in his ribcage. He is also missing some of his brain, thanks to the crabs eating it.
• Bored with Insanity: When Savra meets him, she is surprised at how lucid and rational Svogthir seems after a thousand years of solitary confinement and wonders if the stories about him being crazy were wrong. He assures her that he is quite mad, but also profoundly bored.
• De-power: Svogthir was once the mightiest necromancer in all of Ravnica, but centuries of being fed upon by the Sisters have stripped him of his necromantic powers.
• Egopolis: Svogthos, the guild's pyramid headquarters, is named after him and serves as a garish tribute to himself.
• A God Am I: The Golgari worship Svogthir as a living(?) god. He has clearly let their adulation go to his shriveled head, as he unironically refers to himself as a god at several points.
• Losing Your Head: Savra forced him to tear his own head off right after his victory over the Sisters. Being an undead lich, this didn't kill him. Savra spiking his head on the stone stairs like a volleyball immediately afterward, on the other hand...
• Mix-and-Match Man: He replaced most of his original body with parts harvested from other creatures, turning himself into a patchwork monstrosity. One of these parts was the torso of the Gruul parun Cisarzim.
• No-Sell: His rejuvenated body was impervious to the Sisters' Deadly Gaze.
• Painful Transformation: The ritual to rejuvenate his body lasted for ten hours and left him in agony throughout as his broken bones snapped back into place and wooden spikes painfully sprouted from every inch of his undead flesh.
• Possessing a Dead Body: His spirit survived his physical demise at Savra's hands and later possessed her corpse after she died.
• Restraining Bolt: When Savra created his second body, she did so in a way that allowed her to take complete control of it whenever she pleased. She demonstrated this by completely paralyzing him when he tried to attack her.
• Revenge: He agrees to work with Savra so he can take revenge on the Sisters of Stone Death for usurping his leadership of the Golgari.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Sisters couldn't kill him due to his indestructible head, so instead they crippled his body and left him to rot in a prison he couldn't escape.
• Telepathy: Upon meeting Savra, he casually reaches into her mind and learns most of her secrets, including the fact that she's working with Szadek.
• Time Abyss: Like Niv-Mizzet and Rakdos, Svogthir is the original parun of his guild and has been around for over ten thousand years.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: His head is far too small for his monstrous patchwork body, or for the second body that Savra creates for him. That's what happens when you graft a human head onto the shoulders of a cyclops...
• Uncertain Doom: He is last seen inside the headquarters of the Simic Combine just before said headquarters turn into the Kaiju-sized Blob Monster that is Experiment Kraj. It's not clear whether he dissolved in the creature's acidic substance.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He is on both ends of this trope in the first Ravnica book. On the giving end, he immediately attempts to kill Savra after she's given him a rejuvenated body, only to discover she put in a Restraining Bolt to stop him from doing just that. On the receiving end, Savra magically forces him to commit suicide right after he overthrows the Sister of Stone Death so she can absorb his power and assume leadership of the guild.

Savra vod Savo

Color: Green and Black
Race: Devkarin elf
Class: Shaman

The matka, or high priestess, of the Devkarin elves. Savra wants to overthrow the Golgari Swarm's stagnant leadership and make the guild great again, and she has allied herself with an ancient evil to do so...

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• Ambiguous Situation: Is Savra serving Szadek entirely of her own will, or does the vampire have her under some sort of spell?
• Bat Out of Hell: She gets around by riding on a giant bat.
• Evil Sorcerer: An ambitious and power-hungry necromancer with dark designs for the city.
• The Heavy: She orchestrates much of the chaos in the first book of the Ravnica Cycle, doing so at the behest of her master Szadek.
• Manipulative Bastard: She frees Svogthir from his prison and gives him a powerful new body solely to use him as a tool to overthrow the Sisters of Stone Death. Once he accomplishes that goal for her, she kills him and steals his power to become leader of the Swarm. She likewise conned the Selesnyans into accepting her into their Conclave by pretending to help them cure Vitu-Ghazi of a mysterious corruption, not telling them that she was the one who corrupted the tree in the first place.
• Neck Snap: Szadek kills her by snapping her neck.
• Necromancer: She is a master of necromancy and uses her knowledge of dark rituals to craft a new undead body for Svogthir. She has also been quietly replacing most of the Selesnya Conclave's quietmen with zombies under her command for decades.
• Power at a Price: Both of her creature card's abilities tack beneficial effects onto the act of sacrificing your other creatures. If the creature you sacrificed was green, you regain 2 life. If it was black, you can instead pay 2 life to make all your opponents sacrifice a creature as well.
• Super-Strength: The power she stole from Svogthir makes her strong enough to tear another person's hand off at the wrist.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once Svogthir deposes the Sisters, she magically compels him to tear his own head off and hand it to her, at which point she dashes it on the ground. She herself is later killed by Szadek once she has accomplished all he wanted of her.

Jarad vod Savo

Color: Black and Green
Race: Devkarin elf lich

A Golgari huntsman who first crossed paths with Agrus Kos during a pivotal investigation in the latter's early career. He eventually became guildmaster, only to be killed by Vraska in the leadup to the War of the Spark.

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• Bounty Hunter: He worked as a bounty hunter in the Tenth district before Kos effectively ran him out of town.
• The Bus Came Back: Jarad was one of the main characters in the Ravnica novel, but he got Demoted to Extra in Guildpact: he shows up for a single scene at the end of the book, silently acting as one of the pallbearers at Agrus Kos's funeral. He returns to being a protagonist in Dissension.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to his sister Savra's Cain. Jarad is far less evil than Savra, and he turns against her after she tries to have him killed for no discernible reason, helping Fonn and Kos to thwart her dastardly plans.
• Challenge Seeker: He likes to hunt powerful foes that can fight back and will be disappointed if his prey doesn't give him much of a fight. He was so disgusted by one centaur's feeble attempts to defend itself that he swore off hunting centaurs altogether, considering them unworthy prey.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Jarad is an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette of a dark elf who dresses in macabre clothing, ruthlessly hunts other sentient beings, and commands hordes of deadly insects through sinister magic. On top of that, he later becomes a lich. In any other series this man would be a villain, but in the Ravnica Cycle novels, he's one of the protagonists and is working to stop far worse people from plunging the city into chaos.
• Forgot About His Powers: The Ravnica Cycle novels depict Jarad as a skilled fighter and tracker who can turn himself invisible, cling to walls, break people's necks with his bare hands, and call upon a wide variety of real and fantastical insects for various offensive and defensive purposes. In The Gathering Storm, he uses none of these abilities when Vraska barges into his throne room to stage a coup. He relies entirely on champions to fight her in his stead, and when those champions are defeated or turn against him, he makes no attempt to defend himself, instead making panicked and ineffectual threats against Vraska until she kills him.
• Gathering Steam: His creature card isn't particularly strong or tough at first, but every creature that goes into your graveyard makes him more powerful.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: He gets a lot of mileage out of his Pest Controller powers, using his bugs as spies, caltrops, torture devices, and more. At the climax of the first book, he even manages to take control of the Lupul while they're in their Worm That Walks state and make them attack Szadek.
• King Mook: The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica presents Jarad as a beefed-up version of a regular Devkarin Lich, with twice the normal hit points and a few extra abilities.
• Neutral Evil: The Guildmaster's Guild to Ravnica states that this is Jarad's official In-Universe character alignment, at least during his time as a lich.
• Our Liches Are Different: After he was killed by Izolda, he used his necromantic knowledge to possess his own corpse, becoming a lich.
• Papa Wolf: He loves his son Myc dearly and would do anything to protect him. When he learns that Myc has been kidnapped by the Cult of Rakdos, he immediately gathers a small army of Golgari teratogens and storms the Cult's headquarters alongside his ex-wife.
• Pest Controller: He has the power to commune with and control insects, making them do his bidding. When amplified by Savra's staff, his ability can even control the worms that make up the Lupul.
• Poor Communication Kills: When he first ran into Kos and Zunich, Jarad was trying to rescue a child that had been kidnapped by the murderous Rakdos gang leader Palla, and not trying to spirit Palla away as they initially assumed. Had he told the Wojeks this, Zunich's Accidental Murder of the child would have been avoided.
• Power at a Price: His "Golgari Lich Lord" card lets you deal potentially massive damage to your opponents by sacrificing one of your other creatures, and he can resurrect himself if you sacrifice two of your lands.
• Reluctant Ruler: Jarad never wanted to become guildmaster of the Golgari Swarm and does not enjoy the duties required of his position, but he carries them out to the best of his ability regardless.
• Resurrective Immortality: In the card game, he can be brought back from the graveyard for the low cost of sacrificing one Forest and one Swamp.
• Secret-Keeper: He's the only living person other than Agrus Kos who knows that Myczil Zunich accidentally murdered a child. He promised Kos that he would never reveal this secret, telling anyone who asked that the child was killed by the Rakdos gang leader Kos and Zunich had been pursuing.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: He wears a skull-shaped mask as part of his huntmaster getup.
• Stealth Expert: He knows an advanced "chameleon hex" that makes him mostly invisible, masks the sound of his footsteps, and ensures that he won’t leave any trace of his passage when moving.
• Taken for Granite: Vraska kills him by turning him to stone in The Gathering Storm.

The Sisters of Stone Death

Color: Black and Green

Race: Gorgon

A group of three (originally five) gorgon sisters who overthrew Svogthir and assumed control of the Golgari Swarm. Their rule lasted for a thousand years but ended when Savra released a rejuvenated Svogthir from his imprisonment.

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• Alliterative Family: The three Sisters who were still alive at the start of the Ravnica Cycle were named Ludmilla, Lexya, and Lydya.
• Ambiguously Related: Ludmilla was apparently Vraska's primary parental figure as a child, and her horrific death at the hands of the Azorius acted as Vraska's primary Cynicism Catalyst. They were clearly very close, and Ravnican gorgons are apparently pretty rare, but it's never explicitly stated that the two share blood.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Two of the original five sisters died fighting Svogthir, and while the survivors managed to defeat him, they couldn't kill him.
• Chain Pain: Each Sister wields a long chain with a weapon at one end for the rare occasions when their petrifying gaze isn't enough to deal with something.
• Deadly Gaze: They're gorgons, so naturally people who make direct eye contact with them turn to stone.
• Master of Illusion: They use one-way glamours to conceal their faces so they can address their subjects without petrifying them. They drop said glamours whenever it's time to rumble.
• Power Parasite: Svogthir claims that the Sisters have been "feeding" on his power throughout his thousand-year imprisonment to make themselves stronger.
• Reforged into a Minion: Two of their creature card's abilities imply they can do this. One lets them exile a creature that is blocking or blocked by them, while the other brings a creature that the Sisters have exiled back into play under your control.
• Sole Survivor: Ludmilla was the only one of the three to survive their rematch with Svogthir, and she only lived because Svogthir spared her life at Savra's suggestion.

House Dimir

Szadek

"In secrecy is strength. None can oppose one who cannot be found."

Color: Blue and Black
Race: Vampire

The mythical parun of House Dimir and the one who first pitched the Guildpact to the warring guildmasters ten thousand years ago.

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• Big Bad: He's the real villain of the Ravnica novel, orchestrating everything that happens from behind the scenes in a bid to destroy the Guildpact and Take Over the World.
• Big Entrance: His first proper appearance is preceded by the sudden appearance of unnatural storm clouds which blot out the morning sun and plunge the city back into the darkness of night. He then descends from the churning darkness at the heart of this storm like some dark god and declares that all of Ravnica will pay in blood for his ten millennia imprisonment.
• Body Horror: By the time the Lupul get done with him, he's been partially Stripped to the Bone and most of the rest has had the skin chewed off to expose the musculature underneath.
• Demoted to Dragon: Dissension reveals that Augustin IV killed the imprisoned Szadek and enslaved his ghost, forcing the vampire—and by extension, House Dimir—to do his bidding.
• Hell Has New Management: His arrest and subsequent execution allowed him to take over Agyrem, the Ravnican afterlife, and enslave its ghostly residents into a private army.
• Kill the God: His goal in the first book is to kill Mat'selesnya, the godlike elemental worshipped by the Selesnya Conclave, and in so doing destroy the Guildpact.
• Last of His Kind: Szadek is the last living member of an ancient race of vampires.
• The Man Behind the Man: Savra may be the most visible and active antagonist in the first book, but Szadek is the one pulling her strings.
• Manipulating the Opponent's Deck: His creature card has this effect. Whenever he attacks a player directly, he doesn't damage them, instead forcing them to mill a number of cards equal to the damage he would have inflicted.
• Real After All: At the start of the original Ravnica cycle, most people think that he is just a myth and that his guild never existed. This is exactly what he wants them to think, and he reveals his existence at the climax of the block.
• Time Abyss: He's been alive and kicking since before the signing of the Guildpact, which was ten thousand years before the present day.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Downplayed. When Jarad takes control of the Lupul and orders them to attack Szadek, the worms find that his vampiric essence is too much for them to consume and is in fact consuming them even as they consume him. They still do a lot of damage to him despite this, however, and he is in no condition to harm anyone once the worms are dealt with.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: He killed Razia by impaling her with her own Flaming Sword.
• Weather Manipulation: He conjures up dense black clouds to blot out the morning sun when he first makes his presence known, presumably to protect himself from the sunlight.
• Xanatos Gambit: The third book reveals that his plan in the first book was this. Either Szadek kills Mat'selesnya, thus breaking the Guildpact; or he is arrested for trying to break the Guildpact, which breaks the Guildpact anyway because his role as laid out in the Guildpact is to oppose the Guildpact. Regardless of what happens, he gets what he wants.

Lupul

Color: Blue and Black
Race: Horror

Also known as "lurkers", these shapeshifting horrors serve House Dimir as spies and assassins. In the game, they are represented by the card Mindleech Mass.

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• Kill and Replace: Their modus operandi. Once a lupul devours someone, it can transform into them and imitate their mannerisms near perfectly. They've replaced most of the Wojek League's top brass this way.
• Morph Weapon: While shapeshifted, they can morph parts of their body into powerful pseudopods with which to bludgeon and restrain foes.
• One to Million to One: The countless worms that make up a Lupul merge together into a single entity whenever it shapeshifts into something or someone.
• Power Parasite: Their in-game ability effectively lets you steal cards from your opponent's hand and use them against their previous owners.
• The Worm That Walks: Each lupul's true form is a writhing mass of countless worms.

Lazav

Color: Blue and Black
Race: Shapeshifter
Class: Detective

The enigmatic new guildmaster of House Dimir. He arose to power by the time of the Return to Ravnica block.

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• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: He attacks Dovin Baan while disguised as Chandra during War of the Spark.
• Brown Note: The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica states that Lazav's shortsword inflicts psychic damage and imposes disadvantage on the target's next attack roll, implying that his strikes ravage the victim in body and mind.
• Dead Person Impersonation: While the specifics vary, all three of Lazav's creature cards allow him to shapeshift into a creature that was in somebody's graveyard at some point.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: He has been running a continuous Gambit Roulette with an unclear objective since his introduction.
• In the Hood: Lazav is typically depicted wearing a heavy brown cloak with the hood pulled low over his face, leaving everything above the nose hidden in shadow. It's a fitting look for the mysterious leader of a guild of spies and assassins.
• Mysterious Past: It’s difficult to imagine anyone with exploitable connections or history would be able to hold power in the Dimir for long, so unsurprisingly, any past Lazav ever had was erased from history long before his rise to prominence.
• Neutral Evil: The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica lists this as his official, in-universe alignment.
• Psychic Block Defense: According to the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Lazav has potent psychic defenses that make it impossible for other people to read his thoughts or communicate telepathically with him without his consent. They only function while he's conscious, however.
• Resistant to Magic: His "Dimir Mastermind" card has hexproof, making him immune to most spells.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: He's a natural shapeshifter and can make himself look like anyone or anything.

Etrata

Colors: Blue and Black

Race: Vampire

Class: Assassin

A vampiric assassin and champion of House Dimir.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Regarding her employers and House Dimir as a whole following the Phyrexian invasion. Lazav's gone missing and most of the surviving guild has gone underground, with Etrata saying her guild is leaderless and using that as a reason for seeking new employment as Proft's bodyguard. Proft himself questions why she so stubbornly insists Lazav is dead when they both know he isn't, and she simply responds that a girl has her secrets. Is Lazav actually dead and did Etrata kill him? Nobody knows.
• Not Me This Time: In Murders at Karlov Manor. She is an assassin, she did kill this victim, but she was Not Herself at the time. Her infiltration and escape was sloppy, Zegana was never one of her targets in the first place, and she's too much of a professional to let small details like that slip. She didn't even get paid for it.
• Recruiting the Criminal: When Great Detective Proft concludes that she killed her latest victim while under the influence of Mind Control, he breaks her out of Azorius custody to help with his investigation.
• The Watson: Etrata seems to take this role when working with Proft, and at the end of the story, she is eventually hired by the detective to work with him as his partner.

The Orzhov Syndicate

The Obzedat

"We have no need for military might. We wield two of the sharpest swords ever forged: Faith in our left hand, Wealth in our right."

Colors: White and Black

Race: Spirit (presumably mostly human before)

Class: Advisor

The ghostly council of patriarchs that rules the Orzhov Syndicate. Death has done nothing to blunt the greed and avarice that its members possessed in life.

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• Art Evolution: Their first card, "Ghost Council of Orzhova", depicts the members of the Obzedat as being uniformly obese and near identical to one another. The "Obzedat, Ghost Council" card slims most of them down and gives them more varied appearances.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: According to Aurelia, the Obzedat usually don't do much, but when they do take action, they are merciless.
  Flavor text of Merciless Eviction: "I once saw the Obzedat moved to action. Since that day, I've been thankful that they're mainly lazy, and dead." —Aurelia, to Gideon Jura
• Deader than Dead: They are destroyed by Kaya in the leadup to the War of the Spark.
• Kneel Before Zod: In D&D 5th edition, the Ghost Council can collectively use a legendary action to force a creature which all of them can see to bow before them, effectively rendering that creature helpless for a turn.
• Lawful Evil: The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica lists this as their official In-Universe alignment, representing their use of strict and merciless codes of law and debt to enforce their rule over others.
• Life Drain: Both creature cards which represent the Obdezat make their controller gain life and the opponent lose the same amount of life upon entering the battlefield.
• The Necrocracy: A literal council of ghosts that oversees a guild consisting of both the living and the dead.
• Summon Magic: According to The Guildmaster's Guild to Ravnica, any member of the Ghost Council can magically summon the other members to their location at a moment's notice.

Pivlic

Race: Imp

An imp entrepreneur and information broker with ties to the Orzhov Syndicate. He has an informal working relationship with Agrus Kos.

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• Immune to Fire: As an imp, Pivlic is highly resistant to fire and can tolerate extreme heat. He takes advantage of this while being held captive by Zomaj Hauc: he goads the crazed magelord into blasting him with his fiery Eye Beams for long enough that the heat softens the silver manacles restraining Pivlic, letting him slip a hand free once Hauc has turned his attention elsewhere.
• I See Them, Too: He can see and hear Borca's ghost, who is otherwise imperceptible to anyone but Kos. He even recognizes which law firm gave Borca his insurance policy based on the distinct hue of his spirit.
• Knowledge Broker: He is very good at getting his hands on valuable information in a timely fashion. Kos seeks him out in the first book to learn who hired the Rakdos assassin that killed Borca and Saint Bayul.
• Sapient Eat Sapient: One of Pivlic's venues was a restaurant where Undercity residents with a taste for sapient flesh—zombies, demons, zombie demons, and so on—could fight each other to the death for the entertainment of the other patrons. The losers would either be eaten by the victor or be butchered and added to the larder.

Teysa Karlov

Color: White and Black
Race: Spirit (formerly Human)
Class: Advisor

An advokist and heiress of the Orzhov Syndicate's prestigious Karlov family.

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• Amoral Attorney: She started out as the Ravnican equivalent of a lawyer and cared little for her clients beyond how much money she could make off them.
• Attending Your Own Funeral: Following her death in Murders at Karlov Manor, she shows up as a ghost to her own funeral to reassert control over the Syndicate.
• Classy Cane: A poised and elegant heiress who relies on a cane to compensate for a congenital limp. She keeps it as a ghost.
• Cleavage Window: Her outfits typically feature a conspicuous opening shaped like the Orzhov Syndicate's sunburst logo on her chest.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: When Teysa learns the full scope of the deal between the Orzhov Syndicate and the Izzet League, she immediately tells "Uncle" to go screw himself and rallies the townsfolk to stop Zomaj Hauc from completing his plans. She may be as ruthless, ambitious, and greedy as any other Orzhov, but she's not about to let a crazed megalomaniac burn the whole world to the ground in the name of short-sighted short-term profit.
  Teysa: 'The Guild of Deals cannot thrive without a world to deal in.' Consider that my first matriarchal proverb.
• Mafia Princess: The fantasy equivalent. For all intents and purposes, the Orzhov are a crime syndicate masquerading as a religion, and Teysa is the scion of one of their most prestigious families.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Her undoing in Murders at Karlov Manor. During the Phyrexian invasion, she used her intelligence network to decipher the Phyrexian language and pass intel to La Résistance, saving many lives. The culprit mistakenly thought she was a Phyrexian collaborator and had her assassinated.
• Non-Action Guy: She's an heiress with a weak constitution and a congenital limp. If there's fighting to be done, she leaves it to more capable parties like her thrull bodyguards.
• Older Than She Looks: No younger than 112, despite looking a quarter of that at most.
• Shoot the Messenger: When Teysa first arrives in Utvara, she summons all the major guild representatives to meet with her as their new baroness. Zomaj Hauc, the local Izzet magelord, is too busy and sends an envoy to meet with her in his stead. Teysa takes offense to this, as the Orzhov consider it a sign of weakness to meet with lackeys, so she decides to send a message by blowing the envoy's brains out at the end of their meeting.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Her ability to create and reanimate thrulls and control the taj comes from her Orzhov blood.
• Truth Serums: She specializes in creating "verity circles" that force anyone standing within them to tell the truth.

The Selesnya Conclave

Fonn Zunich

Race: Half-elf

A member of the ledev, an order of Selesnyan knights who protect travelers with the aid of their specially trained animal companions. When an important member of the Conclave dies under her watch on the eve of the Decamillennial, Fonn becomes the subject of a manhunt.

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• An Arm and a Leg: Savra tears off one of Fonn's hands at the wrist near the climax of the Ravnica novel. By Dissension, Fonn has replaced the hand with a prosthetic cytoplast.
• The Beastmaster: She is partnered with a golden-furred wolf named Biracazir, who acts as a mount when needed and fights alongside her in battle.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Her weapons of choice are the longsword and longbow.
• Deadpan Snarker: She takes many opportunities to snark when the going gets tough. For instance, when Biracazir suddenly shows up to help her and Jarad against some zombie thugs:
  Jarad: Found your wolf?
  Fonn: I can see why you're the huntmaster. You don't miss a thing.
• Epic Fail: When she and Jarad are trying to fend off a swarm of enemies that are attacking their airship, she fires a bam-stick shot that misses all three of her intended targets and blows up one of the airship's thrusters. This didn't help.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Elf on her mother's side, human on her father's side.
• Healing Hands: She knows a bit of healing magic, which she uses to tend to her wolf's injuries.

The Simic Combine

Momir Vig

"Look beyond, to the vascular awareness that all life is a map to greater knowledge."

Color: Blue and Green
Race: Elf
Class: Wizard

The Progenitor of the Simic Combine at the time of the original Ravnica Cycle. He hired Capobar the thief to obtain a sample of cerebral fluid from the corpse of one of Zomaj Hauc's dragons.

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• Bad Samaritan: Under his leadership, the Simic Combine has made cytoplasts—biotech prosthetics that can serve a variety of purposes—readily available to the people of Ravnica. Vig is not doing this out of altruism, however, nor even from a desire to turn a profit: the cytoplasts are a way of covertly generating the biomass needed to bring Project Kraj to fruition. Once he activates Experiment Kraj, the cytoplasts tear themselves off their hosts and flock to Novijen to become the monster’s body.
• Engineered Heroics: He allowed some of the dragon's brain fluid to fall into Izolda's hands, knowing that she would use it to revive Rakdos. He let this happen so that he could pit his own giant monster, Experiment Kraj, against the rampaging demon and show the people of Ravnica that they need the Simic Combine's leadership.
• Evil Gloating: Vig is actually pleased when he gets Kos to admit that he's a spy for the Azorius, since this gives Vig a chance to monologue at length about his plan to have the Simic Combine Take Over the World. He also mocks Kos for thinking that he is working with Szadek.
• Eye Scream: Kos kills him by ramming the pointy end of Svogthir's staff through Momir Vig's eye.
• Last of His Kind: He is the last living member of an unknown race of elves that were wiped out before the signing of the Guildpact.
• Our Elves Are Different: Momir Vig belongs to a completely different race of elves from the Silhana and the Devkarin. He has green skin, a large cranium, and Creepy Long Arms that end in overly long fingers. Altogether, these traits make him look less like a typical fantasy elf and more like one of the Little Green Men.

Zegana

Color: Green and Blue
Race: Merfolk
Class: Wizard

The Prime Speaker of the Simic Combine and the effective guildmaster following Momir Vig's demise.

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• Barrier Change Boss: A downplayed example. The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica states that she can use a legendary action to give herself temporary resistance to one of four damage types.
• Draw Extra Cards: Both of her creature cards let you draw cards when she enters the battlefield. Her "Prime Speaker" iteration lets you draw cards equal to her power, while her "Utopian Speaker" version lets you draw a single card if you already control at least one creature with a +1/+1 counter.
• Gale-Force Sound: Whenever she strikes someone with her Prime Speaker's Trident, the weapon releases a blast of thunderous sound so intense that nearby creatures are harmed and violently flung away from her.
• Killed Off for Real: She is one of the victims in Murders at Karlov Manor.
• Make Some Noise: Her Prime Speaker's Trident can release harmful blasts of Gale-Force Sound whenever it strikes a foe according to the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.
• Making a Splash: The Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica states that she can magically conjure up a wave of water to batter her enemies and knock them flat.
• Prongs of Poseidon: The plane's most important merfolk character wields a magical trident. Go figure.
• Status Buff: Her "Utopian Speaker" card can give herself four +1/+1 counters as an activated ability, effectively doubling her initial power and toughness.

Guildless

Krenko

"Save that one! She looks rich!"

Color: Red

Race: Goblin

Class: Warrior

A guildless mob boss operating out of Tin Street, Krenko is a remarkably savvy organizer and opportunist par excellence, two traits that allowed him to become arguably the most powerful non-Guild aligned person in all of Ravnica.

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• Badass Normal: Krenko is the closest thing to a genuine power player that exists among the Guildless, a position he reached with little more than charisma, wiliness, and a bit of shadowy help.
• Kingmaker Scenario: One of the reasons he and his gang are still around: Guilds looking to cause mayhem with plausible deniability (particularly the Dimir, but others as well, otherwise he would just become a full-time Dimir asset, which would kind of negate the whole "plausible deniability" thing) farm out work to them, and in turn ensure that the Azorius and Boros never fully eliminate them.
• Properly Paranoid: After the incident at Karlov Manor, he tries to insert himself into the murder investigation by abducting and interrogating an Agency informant — after all, the killer is targeting important people, and he's important, so he might be next. He's slightly off about the killer's motive, but he is correct about being a target.
• Smarter Than You Look: Goblins, especially on Ravnica, have a reputation as dimwitted yes-men who largely live to sacrifice themselves in pointless spectacles dictated by their superiors. Krenko (while still somewhat impulsive and Book Dumb) has a concept of biding his time and gathering information, which makes him disproportionately dangerous.

Araithia "Rat" Shokta

Race: Human

A guildless girl from Ravnica who gets swept up in the events of War Of The Spark via proximity to some of the main players. Araithia Shokta, or simply Rat to her friends, was born to Gruul parents, but can't decide whether's she'll join the Clans, the Selesnya Conclave, or the Cult of Rakdos, but has close friends in all three. She was also born with a unique form of magic that makes it so that only certain people can notice her, while others walk right past her unless she's pointed out to them. She doesn't let it get her down. Mostly.

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• Badass Normal: She's not a Planeswalker, and, aside from her inmate invisibility, possesses no magic to speak of, but keeps up with Kaya and the others when it comes to fighting the Eternals.
• By the Eyes of the Blind: As mentioned, some form of magic that she was born with makes it so other people don't even notice she's there, with a select few exceptions, like her mother, Teyo and Kaya. Her godfather Boruvo implies it has something do with a person's personality, but doesn't explain further; whatever it is was enough for him to trust Kaya and Teyo right after meeting them, though. Other people can see and hear her if they've been told she's there by someone else, but have to actively concentrate on her to do so.
• Genki Girl: Energetic, and speaks endlessly without a thought to letting others get in a word. When you consider how seldom she actually gets to talk to someone else, this becomes a lot more understandable.
• Manchurian Agent: Unfortunately, the Dimir guildmaster, Lazav, is also able to see and hear her, and has been conditioning her since childhood. She has a second personality called Aktos Tarr who thinks he's a male vampire, and is one of the Dimir's most effective assassins thanks to her invisiblity.
• Ms. Exposition: Spends most of War Of The Spark informing Teyo (and by extension, any new readers not familiar with Ravnica) on the finer points of each Guild, and what little she knows regarding Planeswalkers.
• Ship Tease: With Teyo. Not only is he one of the few who can notice her, they spend most of War Of The Spark keeping each other safe.

The Nephilim

Color: All but Green (Yore-Tiller), All but Red (Witch-Maw), All but Black (Ink-Treader), All but Blue (Dune-Brood), All but White (Glint-Eye)

Race: Nephilim

An ancient species of nigh-indescribable beings dating to long before the Guildpact and the construction of the city of Ravnica. They are venerated as embodiments of primal power and mind-shattering knowledge by the Cult of Yore.

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• Almighty Idiot: They apparently don't acknowledge worship or sacrifice, nor interact with their followers in any way, acting more as distant, cryptic muses than active deities. Not that it stops their followers from trying.
• Beast with a Human Face: One of the Nephilim has a small node resembling a human face just above its vast, toothy mouth.
• Eldritch Abomination: They rival the Eldrazi in terms of sheer strangeness. No two Nephilim look anything alike, and they all look as much like surrealist artwork as they do living creatures.
• Feed It a Bomb: Fonn and her trainees kill the Yore-Tiller Nephilim by dropping powerful explosives into the breathing vents on its back as the creature is charging up its Breath Weapon.
• Floating Limbs: The Yore-Tiller Nephilim's head floats above the rest of its body.
• Gathering Steam: The Witch-Maw Nephilim starts out as the weakest of its kin, but it grows stronger every time its controller casts a spell.
• Leaking Can of Evil: The Nephilim are confined to the deepest reaches of the Undercity, miles beneath the oldest rubble that even the Dimir and Golgari can't be bothered with. The five that emerged into the city proper did so after eating the discarded corpse of a cloned dragon, dumped where its creator hoped no one would find it.
• Mook Maker: The Dune-Brood Nephilim spawns Sand creature tokens whenever it deals combat damage to a player. These tokens are individually weak, but since the Nephilim spawns one for each land its controller has, they can quickly form a small army.
• Necromancer: The Yore-Tiller Nephilim can bring creatures back into play from its controller's graveyard whenever it attacks.
• That's No Moon: In Guildpact, several characters mistook the dormant Yore-Tiller Nephilim for a collapsed building until it woke up and attacked them.

Troyan

Color: Green and Blue

Race: Vedalken

Class: Scout

Formerly a member of the Simic Combine, the explorer Troyan left his old affiliation to explore the new horizons opened up after March of the Machine.

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• Bold Explorer: Troyan is the first named character to be shown traveling between planes via the newly opened Omenpaths, being first encountered climbing beanstalks on Eldraine.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: He fits in quite well on Eldraine, acting as an Expy the titular character of Jack and the Beanstalk.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Vedalken (particularly on Ravnica) are generally portrayed as Straw Vulcan Totalitarian Utilitarians who suffer from a chronic Lack of Empathy. By contrast, Troyan is a gregarious Loveable Rogue and Thrill Seeker.
• Reduced Mana Cost: His creature card can be tapped to produce 1 Green and 1 Blue mana which can only be spent on spells that have a converted mana cost of 5 or more, allowing you to cast expensive spells more easily.

Alquist Proft

Color: Blue and White

Race: Human

Class: Detective

An ex-Azorius lawmage who left the guild to take up a position with the Ravnican Agency of Magicologial Investigations.

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• Bluffing the Murderer: How he baits out the killer during his Summation Gathering in Murders at Karlov Manor. He declares that he's close to solving the case, but that he needs to interrogate each suspect individually, giving the culprit one last opportunity to silence him.
• Great Detective: His role in Murders at Karlov Manor. Within minutes of his arrival he's found a pattern the other investigators missed and identified the murderer in a busy crowd, and he's the one who solves the larger case in the end.
  Etrata: Oh, and I suppose you like having people who are smarter than you around while you're trying to work?
  Proft: I wouldn't know. It's never happened.
• Non-Action Guy: He possesses many talents, but combat and self-preservation are not among them. Etrata knocks him flat during her attempted escape from Karlov Manor, and when they're working together later on she has to thwart more than one attempt on his life (which is part of the reason she sticks around as his Watson at the end).
• Photographic Memory: Can recall any location he's seen in perfect detail, and can use illusion magic to conjure images of them at will. Extremely useful for examining crime scenes.
• Refuge in Audacity: So, you've just confronted Niv-Mizzet about a massive crisis that happened under his watch. You've gotten him to admit that he knew about the crisis the whole time, but chose not to intervene because he was busy with a secret project — which you've already figured out, down to the finest details. What do you do next? Convince him to hire you for said project, of course.

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